Sky: addressable TV's diverse targeting could make it 'Christmas all year' for brands

Addressable TV ads could help brands celebrate "Christmas all year round" according to Sky's head of special projects and multicultural business who has been working with household names like Asda to reach underserved audiences.

Speaking at The Drum’s Programmatic Punch this week, Debarshi Pandit said brands may not necessarily have fight so hard for a share of voice at Christmas if they instead develop creative for more diverse households and target them using programmatic TV.

“Brands can celebrate Christmas all year round and reach out to a community that is not being serviced robustly through addressable TV," he explained.

“77% of British Asians feel like UK ads have no relevance to them, that is around 4.5 million people. If you are commissioning creative that does not reflect the audience you are trying to reach, that it is a missed opportunity. With addressable TV we can help bridge that.”

In particular, he pointed to a campaign Sky helped develop with Asda to target households celebrating Ramadan via its connected TV platform AdSmart. "It was the first time that the client has been bold enough to do something around that community," he said.

Through the month of Ramadan, the retailer upped its stock of culturally diverse goods in stores with high Muslim footfall. Alongside this, the grocer created a targeted marketing campaign to drive home the promotion to relevant audiences. Audiences within geographical proximity to select stores, who were deemed likely to be Muslim, were fed the creative when viewing VoD content on Sky. Two 10-second ads were created to showcase the range of Asda's offering.

Pandit said: "The effort opened up opportunities the third biggest holiday in the UK, with Ramadan placing just behind Christmas and Easter. Through that, [marketers] get brand affinity and love, because [consumers] buy the brand that has respected you.”

The campaign reached 100,000 households and delivered more than 1.5m impressions.

According to an evaluation from specialist research agency BDRC those exposed to the Sky AdSmart activity were 17% more likely to cite Asda as a top-of-mind brand advertising a multi-cultural range compared to a demographically-matched unexposed group.

Furthermore, as per the report, 80% of respondents said 'it was great' to have creative aimed at them. 59% of viewers agreed that Asda had a range of food and drink for different cultures, religions and cuisines, against 56% of non-viewers who hadn't been exposed to the ads. Asda saw an uplift of 5% brand affinity in this group.

Beyond this opportunity, Pandit opened up on the potential growth of addressable budgets in the UK in 2019.

For him, there is an opportunity to engage "global cultural content viewers" using Sky AdSmart. He is laying down plans to help brands engage households celebrating Eid, Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi and more.